Lies and the liars who perpetrate them

           Yet another letter to the editor with no chance of being published


     Thank you for the column by  Richard Cohen in Tuesday's edition ("Poverty is More Than a Convention Speech." )  My day would have complete except that you also ran yet another misguided, inadequately researched and misleading column by Thomas Sowell  ("Democratic Party Makes Dependency a Way of Life"). Coming as it does on the heels of Romney's  (too candid?) remarks regarding the  “47% of the country who are dependent on government" and 'who believe they are victims' will vote for Obama no matterwhat"  tirade,  it reinforces several untrue stereotypes and simply makes several blatantly untrue suppositions.

     Sowell starts by lauding the statistic that shows Conservatives giving slightly more than Liberals (on average) to philanthropic causes. The huge canard here is that the survey Sowell cites lumps Church tithing and donations with charity, while the truth is that it simply isn't that (charity). Most contributions to religious organizations pay for operating costs and salaries and are tax deductible for the donor and recipient both.  Not surprisingly, many fewer liberals identify with a particular church, and few of them actually give 10% of their income. Dropping the religious contributions, Liberals actually give more"un-earmarked" funds to charitable causes.   

    Sowell  references Milton Freidman's statement that the heyday of  free market capitalism in the 19th century saw a huge increase in philanthropic activity. True enough,but grossly misleading.  The age of the Robber Barons was a period of unregulated growth and greed. The best of these, Andrew Carnegie, did in fact give away essentially all his fortune, but a popular cartoon from the period  sums it up best.  A starving  man wants a ham sandwich and Carnegie is portrayed as saying "Give him a Library."  The same is true of Rockefeller who, unlike Carnegie, kept most of his ill gotten gains (see Ida M. Tarbell's "AHistory of the Standard Oil Company") but donated millions to medical research later in his life when he was concerned about his soul and his legacy. J.P. Morgan bought art with his world's largest fortune. The fact that the art was  made available to the public after his death was, I am sure, of little consolation to  starving children in the Bowery.  Conditional charity is simply spending on one's pet projects.  It is inconceivable to think of Morgan, Gould, or Rockefeller helping build a Habitat house, for example,  or donating to such a cause.  The late 19th century was also the era of Social Darwinism, which Professor Sowell well knows.  At this time persons  of African descent like Sowell were considered unworthy of even charity in many parts of the nation, and those who were concerned were certainly not among the wealthy. As recently as the 1930s the Daughters of the American Revolution,  the ultimate Good Old (and wealthy)  Girl's club, refused to even allow ro soprano Marian Anderson to sing in Constitution Hall because she was Black. 

    A third misleading assertion is that FDR fiendishly contrived to win votes by feeding the starving and providing government  jobs during his first administration. Sowell cites unemployment rates of "over 20%" during his first years. He omits the fact that in 1931, year three of Hoover's administration, the unemployment rate was at 25%. FDR simply was unwilling to allow starving Americans to die, unlike the Ron Paul supporters' "let 'em die" referring to the uninsured.  The idea of the Right flogging a sitting President who inherited a mess of some eight year's building isn't new; Republicans hurled everything but the kitchen sink at FDR for not immediately  fixing an almost fatally broken economy in the thirties, as they are  with thepresent administration.

     Perhaps the most troubling issue is the forgotten fact that traditional welfare recipient numbers have actuallydecreased (thanks Bill Clinton) but the increase in unemployment and other support systems for the  victims of the current economy have still greatly increased federal spending on people.  Evangelical activist Gary Bauer states ,“There’s a lot of people out now around America who depend on checks from their fellow taxpayers being in the mailbox every day. They will turn out in massive numbers.”
   
    Truth is,that if all  income groups had voted evenly, Obama would have beaten McCain 55.2 percent to 42.7 percent, a net gain of 5.3 points relative to what actually happened. So no, poor government program beneficiaries don’t “all vote” or turn out in “massive numbers”. Truth is  poor people actually don’t vote that often. According to a CNN exit poll in 2008, those making less than $15,000 a year made up 13 percent of the population but just 6 percent of voters, while those making more than $200,000 a year made up just 3.8 percent of the population but fully 6 percent of voters. In plain speak,  Romney is wrong (again) and knows no better;  Professor Sowell who should know better, is simply misleading us with smoke and mirrors.